Data-Driven Investigative Reporting

Dow Jones News Fund @ Merrill College

Sunday, June 2 - Saturday, June 8, 2024

Rob Wells, director
Karen Denny, co-director  
Aidan Hughes, assistant  

Itinerary

Pre-Conference

Sunday, June 2, 2024

Monday, June 3, 2024

Tuesday June 4, 2024

Wednesday June 5, 2024

Thursday June 6, 2024

Friday June 7, 2024

Saturday June 8, 2024

Sunday June 9, 2024

Instructors

Sean Mussenden

Sean Mussenden, a former Washington correspondent, is the data editor for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. He previously oversaw an experiential, hands-on journalism training program at Merrill College that is integral to the college’s “teaching hospital” model of professional instruction: Capital News Service.

He also teaches traditional courses incorporating data visualization, programming, web development, web design, data analysis, social media and computational journalism. Mussenden was appointed to the rank of principal lecturer in 2023.

Derek Willis

Derek Willis, one of the nation’s leading data journalists and an experienced educator, joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Fall 2021 as a lecturer in data and computational journalism.

Willis came to Merrill College having spent 25 years winning awards at some of the top news outlets in the country. His latest stop was ProPublica, where he served as a news applications developer since 2015.

He previously held interactive journalism roles with The New York Times and The Washington Post, after working as a database reporter for The Washington Post, The Center for Public Integrity, Congressional Quarterly and The Palm Beach Post.

Daniel Trielli

Daniel Trielli joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s faculty in Fall 2023 as assistant professor of media and democracy.

He researches the impact of algorithmic curation on journalism and political information, and studies how Google affects the news and the audiences that use it to search. He is interested in data and computational journalism, media literacy and algorithmic accountability. Trielli came to Merrill College as a master’s student in 2015 after a 10-year career as a journalist in Brazil at the national newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo, and the regional newspaper, Diário do Grande ABC.

Adam Marton

Adam Marton is an award-winning journalist and graphic designer who joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2018 after 13 years at The Baltimore Sun.

Marton is focused on quality storytelling across media, using design and technology to tell rich, human stories. He is a visual journalist and designer specializing in the presentation of the news, including data visualization, front-end development and information graphics.

Rob Wells

Rob Wells, a 2016 Ph.D. alum of Merrill College, returned to the university in the Spring 2022 semester after more than five years at the University of Arkansas, where he rose to the rank of associate professor and led Arkansas’ journalism graduate program. Wells has more than two decades of business journalism experience at The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal.

Wells is the author of “The Enforcers: How Little-Known Trade Reporters Exposed the Keating Five and Advanced Business Journalism” (2019) and “The Insider: How the Kiplinger Newsletter Bridged Washington and Wall Street” (2021).

Constance Mitchell Ford

Constance Mitchell Ford, a 1977 University of Maryland graduate, is a financial journalist who spent more than three decades covering economics, banking, investing and real estate.

Most of those years were spent at The Wall Street Journal in New York, most recently as the Global Real Estate and Property Bureau Chief. Under her leadership, reporters in the real estate group won dozens of journalism awards. Ford personally received the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for business and economics reporting in 2007 for stories about the subprime mortgage crisis.

Josh Davidsburg

Josh Davidsburg is an award-winning broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker who earned his M.A. at Merrill College in 2024 and his B.A. at Merrill in 2001.

Davidsburg started his career at WMDT in Salisbury; three years later, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he worked for NBC-2 WBBH for two years. He then returned home to work for WBAL in Baltimore and Maryland Public Television, where he reported for two years.

He specializes in streaming media and the intersection between cinema and journalism. His passion lies in the future of journalism and the role streaming video and social media will play in the profession. Davidsburg teaches documentary and broadcast journalism as a senior lecturer.

Karen Denny

Karen Denny is Merrill College’s director of internships and career development. She previously served as the Annapolis bureau director of the Capital News Service, until taking over leadership of the career center at the beginning of 2022. Denny is a former editor with the McClatchy-Tribune (formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune) News Service, where she founded the wire’s Newsfeatures and International sections, and most recently was a features editor.

She previously worked as the Maryland editor for The Washington Times, and at the suburban Journal Newspapers as an editor and local government reporter. She also served as a professor at Sang Ji University in Won Ju, South Korea.

Christoph Mergerson

Christoph Mergerson, who completed his Ph.D. in Communication, Information and Media at Rutgers University, joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Fall 2021 as a visiting assistant professor. He was appointed to the rank of assistant professor in Fall 2022.

Mergerson’s research and teaching interests include journalism history, weather journalism, race and media, and journalism and democracy. Mergerson arrived at Merrill with ongoing research that examines whether news media in the Southern United States are producing racially inclusive, public-service journalism. He brings award-winning classroom experience from teaching courses at Rutgers, including Communication Law and Global News.

Kevin Blackistone

Kevin Blackistone is a longtime national sports columnist now at The Washington Post, a panelist on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” a contributor to National Public Radio and coauthor of “A Gift for Ron,” a memoir by former NFL star Everson Walls published in November 2009 that details his kidney donation to onetime teammate Ron Springs.

Blackistone was a sports columnist for AOL Fanhouse from October 2007 to March 2011 and an award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News from September 1990 to September 2006.

Blackistone is a recipient of numerous awards, including awards for sports column writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, for investigative reporting from the Chicago Newspaper Guild and for enterprise reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Aidan Hughes

Aidan Hughes is a Howard Fellow and graduate student at Merrill College with a background in data, politics, and peace and conflict studies. He earned a B.A. in International Studies and Creative Writing from Virginia Tech in 2017, followed by an M.A. in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen’s University Belfast.

Hughes’ time in post-conflict Northern Ireland, coupled with his professional experience as a data scientist, fuels his interest in harnessing the strengths of both storytelling and data analysis to examine social issues.

Guest Speakers

Gary Fields

A graduate of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Gary Fields is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years of journalism and communications experience, including 30 years at The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY. Fields contributed articles on the events of September 11, 2001, earning the Journal a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for Breaking News coverage. In 2023 he was named a Louisiana Legend by the Louisiana Public Broadcast. He is a past winner of the National Association of Black Journalists Journalist of the Year Award. He has won a number of other journalism awards, including the Thurgood Marshall Award and the Edgar A. Poe Award for the White House Correspondents.

Gary hails from Alexandria, Louisiana and attended Southern University in Baton Rouge and LSU Alexandria before finishing his final two years at NSU where he holds an undergraduate degree in Broadcast and an MA in English. He has served on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. Fields has served on the board of directors of the Lutheran Church of St. Andrew in Maryland and he has been a foster parent in Maryland. He and his wife Helen live in Maryland and have three daughters. He is papa to three grandchildren.

Jeannine Aversa

Jeannine Aversa is chief of communications at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, one of the world’s leading statistical agencies. Before joining BEA in the fall of 2011, Aversa was a journalist for nearly 30 years and reported for The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Fairchild Publications and other news organizations. For more than a decade, Aversa’s coverage focused on economics, monetary policy, finance and politics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Siobhan Hughes

Siobhan Hughes is a reporter covering Congress in The Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau. She joined the congressional team after the 2010 elections and has spent more than a decade tracking the growth of partisanship and political fragmentation in the U.S. She has covered government shutdowns, two presidential impeachment trials, several Supreme Court nomination fights, and the enactment of major tax, trade, stimulus and climate laws. Her coverage also explores the intersection of policy, process and personality.

Before joining the Journal’s congressional team, she had an energy beat for Dow Jones Newswires. She has also worked at Congressional Quarterly and Bloomberg News. Siobhan began her career covering securities policy for Institutional Investor’s newsletter division.

Chad Day

Chad Day is chief elections analyst at The Associated Press. Day is a member of AP’s Decision Desk and writes about politics and elections. Previously, he was a national political reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington and an investigative reporter at the Associated Press. He was part of a team at the Journal awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series of stories exposing federal conflicts of interest.

He is an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies where he teaches data journalism for master’s students. He is a former investigative reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Rev. Brian Hamilton

Hamilton is pastor and preacher at the Westminister Presbyterian Church (USA) in Southwest Washington, D.C. Hamilton serves the community as President of the SW Renaissance Development Corporation that runs Westminster’s Jazz and Blues ministry that resulted in the award-winning programs Friday Night Jazz, Blue Monday Blues, Thinking About Jazz, SW Catering and more. He has lived and worked in the community for nearly three decades and is passionate about improving community relations and the social and economic conditions of Southwest residents.

DJNF Data Interns

Martha Contreras

Martha Contreras is a senior at Northwestern University pursuing Journalism and International Studies majors and a Legal Studies minor. Contreras is a National Association of Hispanic Journalists chapter president and is interested in covering immigration, investigative journalism, politics, education, and foreign affairs. She will be interning at the Investigative Project on Race and Equity.

Shifra Dayak

Shifra Dayak is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, having completed a B.A. in Journalism and B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy. She is most interested in covering politics, the environment, race and identity, labor issues, and business. She will be interning at the Connecticut Mirror, and in September will be joining NOTUS as an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.

Shradha Dinesh

Shradha Dinesh is a senior at William and Mary, majoring in Data Science and Political Journalism. Dinesh has been recognized as a ProPublica Emerging Reporter (2023-24) and is a Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow. Dinesh is interested in covering climate, education, and public policy/government meetings and will be interning at the Howard Center at the University of Maryland this Summer

Cameron Fozi

Cameron Fozi is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, having majored in Data Science. Fozi has received multiple awards from the California College Media Association for social justice reporting, graphics reporting, and enterprise reporting. He is interested in Business Reporting, Data Journalism, and Digital Media and will be interning with the Bay City News Foundation this summer.

Hannah Marszaleck

Hannah Marszaleck is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, having majored in Journalism with a minor in History. Marszaleck will be interning with Inside Climate News this summer, and is most interested in Environment, Entertainment, Education, and Public Policy reporting.

Hannah Rosenberger

Hannah Rosenberger is a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, graduating with majors in Journalism and English & Comparative Literature, with a minor in Hispanic Studies. She was a senior writer at The Daily Tar Heel for three years and is most interested in education, business or legal reporting. She will be interning at ASI Media/Counselor magazine.

Rachell Sanchez-Smith

Rachell Sanchez-Smith is a senior at the University of Arkansas majoring in Journalism and Political Science. She is an associate producer at KUAF, 91.3, National Public Radio for Northwest Arkansas. She has won awards for her reporting with KUAF and ArkansasCovid and is most interested in Health Labor, Politics, Human Rights, Immigration, Government, and Investigative/Watchdog reporting. She will be interning with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Michael Zhang

Michael Zhang is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in Sociology with minors in Computer Science and Journalism. Zhang has previously worked or interned at The Daily Texan, The Daily Dot and KPRC News. Zhang is most interested in investigative reporting, especially relating to policing, and will be interning with Houston Landing.

Resources

Campus Map


Data Journalism Text

Data Journalism with R and the Tidyverse


Important Contacts


Rob Wells, 443-591-1189. email:


Residence Halls & Campus

  • Jennifer Bradley Senior Program Manager Office:301-314-0323 Mobile: 301-440-9276 Email:

  • Rakshanda Hedawoo Assistant Program Manager Mobile: 301-440-9277 Email:

  • Queen Anne’s Hall (For mail/key/access-related questions): 301-314-4455 (HILL)

  • Residential Facilities (To report an issue with your room/residence hall) 301-314-9675 (WORK) Campus Information 301-405-1000

Medical/Emergency Contacts

  • Emergency (University of Maryland Police) 301-405-3333
  • Emergency (Prince George’s County Police) 911
  • Non-Emergency (University of Maryland Police) 301-405-3555
  • University Health Center 301-314-8180